A survey questionnaire come to life! Use (nearly) any object to gather helpful data through an interactive, engaging, and fun multiple-choice survey. This project uses the Makey Makey microcontroller in combination with a Raspberry Pi computer to read in participants’ survey choices and save the results in a text file. Planning & Design! This…
Build a portable gas monitor to check for dangerous levels of hazardous gases in your home, community, or on the go and prevent your friends from lighting a cigarette during a gasoline fight.* This tutorial shows you how to build a web-connected “canary” monitor for three hazardous gases: Liquid Propane Gas (“LPG”), Methane (aka natural gas),…
Bring science fiction to life with a personalized light-up outfit! EL wire is a delightfully futuristic-looking luminescent wire that has the added benefit of staying cool, making it ideal for wearable projects. Combining sensors and a microcontroller with EL wire allow for a wide range of feedback and control options. This project uses the SparkFun…
Wearables are an awesome, relatively new extension of circuits. Conductive threads & fabrics make it easy to attach components like LEDs and sensors to clothing/accessories. Plus, they are a super fun introduction to electronics! These LED earrings were designed b/c I wanted a wearable that was simple, unique, and could be built by-hand w/ available materials….
Conserving freshwater is one of those seemingly constant struggles, especially with a human population exceeding seven billion. In the United States, between 80 – 90 % of freshwater is consumed by agriculture, making it the perfect industry to implement more efficient ways of using water! Installing a soil moisture sensor is one way to optimize…
Welcome to the wonderful world of controlling physical objects with software! This tutorial is a complete beginners introduction to the Raspberry Pi computer, covering the basic features and functions to help you bring your ideas to life! Blinking a light using the Raspberry Pi’s General Purpose Input and Output (“GPIO”) pins is the hardware equivalent…
What cool things can you do with the Raspberry Pi? Welcome back to exploring the Raspberry Pi! There are tons of awesome things you can do with the Raspberry Pi — (pretty much) everything that you would do on a normal computer, like word processing, surfing the internet, streaming videos, etc. You can write programs…
There are a slew of relatively simple systems to control physical objects w/ software. The most popular options are Arduino, the Raspberry Pi, and BeagleBoard. I’m an avid Raspberry Pi advocate, so let’s start with that! The RPi is a simple & inexpensive computer that has general purpose input and output (GPIO) pins that interface…
